C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

What it Takes to Actually Achieve Your New Year’s Resolution(s)       I rolled out of bed this morning, went to the coffee maker to brew my morning cup of Joe, and then put on the local morning news while I listened to the spewing and sputtering sounds made by my generic Keurig.  I don’t usually watch the news in the morning.  I typically get out of bed and, as my coffee is brewing, begin lacing up my shoes for a morning walk while my dog Kenji paces back and forth in anxious anticipation of our almost daily exercise.  But it was so cold this morning, and with slight snow flurries coming down, I thought it would be good to take the day off from my usual walk (much, it must be said, to my dog’s chagrin).  So I turned on the news to see what the weather had in store this week in my adopted home state of Alabama.      But, don’t worry, it’s not the weather in the Deep South that I want to discuss for this essay....

 In February of this year, I published a post entitled "Winter Bulk Building" where I outlined the program that my son Matthew started on Thanksgiving of last year in order to gain a lot of mass.  In a few months, he went from around 210 pounds to just over 250 pounds - I believe it was 251, to be precise.  That was the point when I wrote the bulk-building piece. Fast forward to Thanksgiving of this year, and I thought I would give an update on my son's training, and how he went from being "bulky" to being an outright natural  mass monster.  Now he is a little over 260 pounds, but he didn't just gain 10 pounds of muscle since my last post on his training, he also reduced his bodyfat, and there is a noticeable difference in his "look" now as opposed to then.  Here are a couple of pics that I took of him yesterday while he was training arms in my garage gym: Matthew Sloan performs dumbbell triceps extensions with a pair of 80s for sets of 12 to 15 re...